


Bruises in the Fade

by TheTangoMajere



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Fade Dreams, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mage Inquisitor (Dragon Age), canon typical institutional abuse, dominant solas, protective Cassandra, tags will be updated every chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25622605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTangoMajere/pseuds/TheTangoMajere
Summary: Marius Trevelyan is scarcely more than an apprentice, woefully unready for the responsibility that has landed on his shoulders.  He is also troubled, scarred from his time in the Circle and wayward... more and more, Solas feels that if there is to be any hope of ending this threat, he must teach the boy.  Take him in hand.Updates every other Thursday.
Relationships: Male Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Solas/Male Trevelyan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the ride.

They were like dreams, desperate feverish dreams, except that in dreams pain was never exactly pain. It never bloomed as full and bright as it did in the waking world. A remembered impulse, nothing else. In that way, the shadowed images and disjointed impressions that haunted him were the opposite of dreams. Because, while the images: giant multi-eyed spiders chitinous-armored and chittering with foul menace; dark rocks that tore his skin and were left slick with gleaming blue liquid, more precious ever than blood,- while those images were fleeting, sometimes to disappear into a blackness that felt bottomless, the pain was always there. It was more than present, it was invasive. It was no echo of worldly pain. No caning, no spill of acid, no fist to the ribs could hurt like this. It was as if he'd been torn open, and something several thousand times the size of his body was sewn inside. Every exhalation of its inimical breath burned away another part of him, another essential thing, hollowing him out so that it might somehow fit.  
He didn't want to lose what little was left that was him. He didn't want to struggle to remember his name, struggle to remember what the candied rose petal he'd stolen from his mother's guest table tasted like, he didn't even want to struggle to hold that old ancient anger inside him from all the unfair punishments. These were things that were him, that had once been strung together like pearls and now were scattered, moments and preferences and dreams lost in a well of agony.

And sometimes he thought he fought hard enough and surfaced from it. He thought he smelled the green freshness of elfroot, and heard a voice like cool velvet murmuring words in a language he didn't understand. He thought he felt fingertips, so cold against his skin, brush against his forehead and his wrist, which would have been- if they were real- the first gentle touch he could remember.

And that was the cruelest yet.

He was running. And there was a voice echoing in the darkness around him. _What was happening to her? Could he save her?_ He no longer knew if he was running toward her or away. The emerald vastness inside him swelled, agony-bright, burning away every shadow of every thought, till what was left of him was only a wight, scrabbling with its broken nails for something, anything, in the maze of broken memories.

And then, somehow, it stopped. It broke apart for a moment. He found himself standing on the widow's walk of his family's manor. A cool breeze blew in from the southeast and brought with it the scent of the orchard. Someone was there beside him, standing at his elbow, and yet he could not turn his head to look. He could hear the breath, heavy and loud, as if what was beside him was some massive creature and not another person at all, yet he did not feel at all afraid. Rather, he felt safe, felt impossibly grateful not to be alone. His hand snaked out, tentative, but brushed against only a hint of something soft- fur? clothing?- before strong fingers grasped his wrist and pulled it firmly behind his back, his own knuckles flush along the base of his spine. His breath caught.

"May I not...?" he murmured, not knowing precisely what the end of that question might be. Might he not touch his companion? See him? And would it matter to do either, when he still scarcely remembered himself?

"This is for your own protection, not mine," said a soft voice. It was a tenor, lightly accented and yet not with the notes of any dialect he recognized. He would have called it gentle, but underneath that gentleness was a line of steel sharp enough to cut if one were foolish enough to test the edge of it. "Your dreams are in tatters. If I can bring you through whole, intact-" And here, here there was a note of concern, a note of frustration. "-if I can do that, you will see me and know me."

But this was a thing that was _him_ : a bright glittering thing that he had entirely forgotten. He liked to _push_. He liked to know what happened if someone gave him a firm 'no' and he ignored it. So he twisted his wrist, trying to break free from the grip of cool fingers. And felt them tighten to the point of pain before they pulled away fast, letting him loose.

And what did that mean? He didn't know, so he tried with all that he was, with all his fraying and rallying will, to turn to see who stood beside him. Not to look upon the faded remembered road, or the woods, or the distant magenta and gold of the sunset, but to see who had helped him, who had left a bruising brand upon his wrist.

**"You test me,"** the voice snarled. There was a flutter through him; something not exactly fear but certainly not exactly not fear. He had not expected that the stranger's soft, steely voice could sound like that, as though the barely bridled danger that was palpable with every breath was not in the slicing iron under his calm veneer, but in a temper held beneath even that. His heart raced- but then-

"Good," the voice said. "You will need that will. But know this, _da'len_. My will is far, far stronger than yours. And you will need all the strength we both possess to make it through this darkness. So I suggest that you do not test me again."

" _Da'len_?" he said softly. "So... You're an elf."

And there was only silence after that, only the scent of the orchard and the freezing wood of the widow's walk. There was not the sound of another's breath. He was alone.  
And in the next breath after he realized that the cold, sharp, soothing presence was no longer beside him, the scent of the apple orchard became the scent of freshly spilled blood, and a woman was crying out to him-

_"Please! Help me!"_

And he fell into a chaos of pain and panic and bright emerald-edged shadows.

The darkness was raw, full of old screams. It was hot and wet like a wound trying to heal. He kept seeing the shape of a building he did not quite remember- a temple with arches and corners not quite right to the eye. He kept seeing webs, and hearing dark laughter. He kept seeing jagged stones covered in blood.

But the shape of the stitches that held who he was together were tighter. He could close what was left of himself like a fist around the emptiness, even as that vast and horrible thing inside him stretched and clawed and breathed. And he knew now that sometimes he surfaced, because even in the dreams of the Fade he would not smell the damp, the dust and the mildewed hay from a cold room where he lay on a pallet. Even in dreams of the Fade he would not feel the filth of sweat-soaked, far too thin clothes.  
But the occasional gasp of true air into his lungs was worth the descent back into the thick, stifling, pressing darkness.

He had to keep fighting.

He was standing in the library in the Circle Tower at Ostwick. Around him, figures that were no more than wisps and memories moved among the stacks. The spines of the volumes before him were marked with blurred, unreadable hieroglyphs. He had a book in his hand and he was reading it.

The crisp, even lines of the scribe's hand were clear and sharp to his vision and he could read every word clearly. But as he read, the narrative drifted from a description of the theory of healing magic to a fairy tale he remembered hearing his older sister tell. It was a fairy tale about three princes, a tower with no doors or windows, and a stone made from the sun. But the familiar words of that story were muddied with names and memories of things that had happened to him- or had they happened? He didn't remember, and the feeling was so uncomfortable that it was almost like a nightmare. He could not remember if the story was something that really happened, or the story the way his sister told it, or if it was all the nonsense of a dream.

In a panic, his hand clenched around the book and he meant to fling it away from him-

And-

Long fingers curled over the dark green leather binding and caught it firmly. The fingers were pale, with a hint of that silver-and-gilt quality of the skin of elves, though perhaps it was only memory imagining that. He tried to turn, to see, and once again found that he could not.

"You confound me at every turn," that soft, sharp voice murmured. "You have the will to fight and you use it to fight yourself."

"It's like beetles are crawling over me," he said. "Not knowing if these are all lies. There's something in the dreams here, something in my mind. Something I know to fear. I have to know what's real."

"How many demons do you suppose I have slain to protect you, you- brilliant beyond measure, helpless, spilling the blood of your magic? A hundred? More? Allow your own mind to heal itself as it can."

"Demons?" Yes. _Yes,_ that was what he feared. Demons, taking the shape of things he wanted but might never have, taking the shape of the worst parts of him and lingering in his dreams. "I-"

"Hush," said the voice, and that beautiful, graceful hand opened the book, showing him an inscription. A messy, looping hand spelled out the words:  
_Property of Marius Trevelyan._

His name was a knife, bleeding out the darkness around him. The pain never stopped; if anything, it only grew stronger, harsher, as he clawed himself into consciousness. He came to know that the frozen air, the stale smells of healing salves and his own sick, these were all real. More than once his vision cleared enough to see the stone ceiling of a cell. And then, as if surfacing from cold lake water he was present in the world. Present in a world that washed him in freezing water, threw traveler's clothes on his meager frame, and snapped manacles around his wrists and ankles, leaving him entirely at the mercy of whoever might enter after the guards shut the dungeon door as harshly as if the slam of the wood could be a hateful oath.


	2. One:  The Jade Statuette

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wherein we learn a little more about Marius and his circumstances, and Tango attempts not to use too much actual game dialogue, since we've all seen the intro to Inquisition enough times already. This is also continuously canon divergent, in a very minor way. Tags have been updated. Warnings for implied/referenced child abuse and chronic poisoning.
> 
> Apologies for the long unexpected hiatus, but with things in my life finally slowing down to manageable portions again, readers can expect chapters to come out more regularly in the future, at about once every two weeks.

**Pulse.**

The Lady Seeker- the famous and terrifying Cassandra Pentaghast- had called them 'pulses', and Marius could see why. Every flash of light from the massive, green-bleeding gash in the sky was echoed in a bright flare on his palm. A sympathetic twitch of eerie luminescence, from the outside looking on. From the inside, however, it felt like shards of super-heated stone exploded through his arm, traveling further through his veins each time, taking the breath from his lungs and the strength from his knees with the absoluteness, the mercilessness of the agony.

Though he was lucid enough to walk, even to ask tentative questions, the lingering pain made the world hazy. It was a forced march through icy air and vicious, fun-house disorienting whispers. When they passed the first gate and Cassandra drew her knife, Marius thought she had merely gotten him past the watchful eyes of her companions before she disposed of the traitor they all so despised. He expected the bite of wicked metal into his guts, and almost thought he'd relish it. Almost thought it was a subject of relief. A swift death, instead of being gnawed into nothingness by the sheer size o his pain.

But he felt no stab, no slicing burn, only the loosening of the cords around his wrists. _I can promise you a trial,_ she said. _Nothing more._ And he wanted to laugh, because when had a mage ever stood on a trial block for anything _other_ than a guilty verdict? If they could not make the first charge stick, they would find another. Another. And they had such a plethora of options for him, if anyone would listen long enough to believe that the first and most damning accusation wasn't true.

**Pulse.**

When the green searing faded, leaving Marius gasping in its wake, he had fallen. Below him, ice and snow and rocks soaking and stinging through his cheap clothes. Above him, the sky swirled its fury, painting Cassandra's concerned face in a jade mask. With every pulse the Breach was growing, and so was the mark upon his palm. He could feel the truth of her words as if they vibrated through his marrow. Each burst of agony was greater, now. More consuming. When Cassandra lifted him to his feet once more, Marius could barely summon the will to make his legs move. One step, and then another. Soon, they were running, though he could scarcely comprehend why. It was pure instinct, a need to move faster than the sure death that beat throughout every echo of that last pulse.

When the bridge collapsed under them, he almost imagined it a dream, as some trick of the Fade. Perhaps none of this was happening at all. Perhaps he had never woken, and all those around him were merely spirits taking on the illusions of those who had recently lost so much.

Cassandra rolled to her feet instantly, but Marius landed hard on his hip, the sharp bruising pain enough to make him still for a moment, a silent groan held back at the edges of his breath. He heard a soft whisper, more vicious glee and anticipation than seduction, and shadows twisted before them into the hulking shape of what he could only imagine was a Shade. Its murky covering looked almost like a bound man, the color of ink and mud or the memory of ink and mud; its posture and its talon-tipped arms made it predatory, like a hooded avian. He stared as it approached him, suddenly aware that Cassandra was several feet away from him, battling an identical creature. Panic made him scramble upright, searching with futile glances for anyone or anything that could help him.

There was a staff nearby, abandoned in whatever skirmishes had led up to this event, but Marius had never learned how to fight with one. If he understood the principle correctly, and he wasn't sure he actually did, he would focus the energy of his magic through the staff. But what spell could he use? _Fire, maybe_. Many of the other apprentices at Ostwick had spoken of their experiences with magic, and many had instinctively used fire to defend themselves as children. While he was glad that instinct had never been his own, because his parents would have been even angrier if he burned up the furnishings in the room they locked him in, he did know how to summon fire to light candles, or torches, or a fireplace. It was a simple spell, made difficult only by the necessity to shape the fire and hold it to a certain size.

That had never been an issue before, but as Marius summoned the essence of flame from the Fade, he felt the warped and twisted lines of his magic, of his soul, resist. Agony paired with terror as that alien green light in him fought the control he tried to bear down upon, and, in a burst of panic, he tried to force the spell down the length of the staff in his hand.

The staff which _cracked_ , spewing fire all over him, catching the simple traveler's garb he wore into too-hot flame. He dropped, rolling in terror as burns crawled over his shins, his arm. One of the Shade's claws tore through his shoulder. His own shriek mingled with its ravening cry as he fought to douse his clothing with snow, leaving it heavy and wet and dragging at his limbs.

One sharp chop of Cassandra's blade ended the threat, though Marius was panting and bleeding as he dragged himself to his feet.

"You were at the Conclave," Cassandra said slowly, as if she were puzzling through a riddle. "I had the impression that you were a Circle mage."

"An apprentice," he croaked out. He could see her eyes narrow, analyzing his age. It wasn't unusual exactly for an apprentice to be in his late teens and un-Harrowed, but it was strange for one to be quite so useless as Marius. He drew in another ragged breath, colored by the slowing releasing ribbons of terror, by exhaustion, by pain. Then he made an attempt at expressing the truth, the foolishness of his early life, although words couldn't really express the years locked away in that room, the brutal punishments for any accidental magic, the taste of magebane in every drop of food or drink he was provided. The scornful, haughty look in his mother's eyes.

"My parents are very political. When I was a toddler, I was betrothed in a deal that would make or break the family fortune. Obviously, if I were sent to the Circle, that betrothal would become invalid. So they pretended for as long as they could that I didn't have magic. You can imagine how popular that made me with the Templars."

Her expression turned wry. "Yes. I can. Then you have no combat magic at all?"

"No," he admitted.

"This changes a great deal," Cassandra said grimly. She strode forward, and for just a moment, her hand lingered on his cheek. "I want to believe that you are lying to me, but I am a Seeker. I can tell when magic is out of control, as any Templar could. That means... You _cannot_ be responsible for what happened at the Conclave. You were someone's pawn." She glanced down at his hand and snarled. "Someone's _sacrifice_."

Marius fought to remember who he had been with at the Conclave. He struggled to form images together but found he could remember nothing at all from the time of his arrival to the shadowy terrors that haunted his fever dreams. Whether he remembered or not, her words sounded chillingly likely.

"Stay close to me," the Seeker said firmly. "Try to think if there are any spells you know that can be adapted to our aid, but do not attempt anything you do not know well. Combat concentration is very different."

"This... thing interferes too," Marius added.

She gave him a long look.

"I... will do what I can," he said again. And followed her.

Step over step. Marius' wet trousers and boots tripped him over mounds of snow. His shoulder ached, but compared to the flashes of the pulse it was nothing at all. Just a throbbing distraction that made itself known every once in a while when he reached out thoughtlessly with his left hand. He focused on keeping close to Cassandra and on the repertoire of spells he did know. He had been in the Circle at Ostwick for just over two years. The first year had been spent almost exclusively in teaching him remedial skills, all the theory and essence of spellcraft that children would have learned, and in watching him ever vigilantly for any sign that his parents' greed had already left him tainted by demons.

He couldn't see how the small elemental skills he'd learned would be much help to the Seeker, though he did have a little bit of healing and some mending spells that might prove... something. Presuming they could be used effectively in combat. Hah.

If their opponents were not demons, he might have melted the snow beneath their feet, made it slippery, but most floated or oozed and were not so easy to trip up. The old frustration pooled in his chest, this time sharpened with a brand of uselessness. He was accustomed to feeling like he was wrong, not good enough, _dangerous_ , due to no choice he had ever made and nothing of his own doing.

In the Circle, that frustration had made him defiant, unwilling to continue to push and push for acceptance that could not be won. Here, he watched Cassandra's breathing grow labored as she fought wave after wave of demons without assistance, and felt wretched and stupid that he couldn't help her. It came to a head as they drew nearer to the loud sounds of a larger, pitched battle.

"Up ahead!" Cassandra shouted. "We must help them!"

What can _I_ do? Marius thought sourly, but he was right at her heels as they stumbled upon a scene from some hell-scape. Demons were everywhere, and among them, some Chantry soldiers as well as two other figures: a dwarf and an elf. Above them, a small version of the Breach dangled in the air, half jagged and crystalline and half bleeding viridian aura. It whispered and it creaked, like a heavy forest of icicles about to snap.

Marius stared for a moment as Cassandra leapt into the fray. The dwarf's crossbow sang as its bolt found target after target. The elf moved like a dancer, bursts of arcane energy snapping from the tip of his staff as often as its haft cracked with bone-breaking force against an enemy. Marius watched as ice crept over a shade, snapping in place like crushing fingers, holding it for a brutal swing of Cassandra's blade. How beautiful.

Movement broke him out of his reverie. One of the guards was down, on his back, a demon above him. Marius moved without thinking. He flung himself in front of the downed guard, and found himself unsure of what to do as he was suddenly staring into the wet-looking, murder-ink pseudo-face of the Shade. Flinching, he threw his arm up in a desperate punch, only to realize too late that he'd used his left fist when a pulse ripped through his arm upon contact, almost as though the mark on his hand was a muscle he had accidentally clenched.

The demon staggered back as the small breach above them twisted and crackled and dimmed momentarily. Marius stared at his fist in shock, then stared as a crossbow bolt snarled through the Shade's chest and the thing dissolved into shadow and screams. Then the elf's slender fingers grasped his wrist, pulling him firmly away from the guard behind him, and raised his hand toward the sky.

Again, he felt that tremor through it, that pull as if something within him opened wide, and then clenched shut. The strong grip on his arm was grounding and familiar. His gaze snapped, wide, to the elf at his side, who smiled at him. Nearly his height, and barefoot, the elf's skin gleamed in the oily, eerie light from the Breach. His head was smoothly shaved, ears long and tapered. His tilted, large eyes were deep gray, though they lightened when he smiled, and took on a faint greenish sheen.

"How did you do that?" Marius murmured, numb, looking at the empty air where the rift had been.

"I did nothing," was the quiet response, and yes, he knew that voice. It was gentler here, less steely, but it held the same soft melodic cadence. "I surmised that your Mark could help close the Rifts, and I was correct."

"Good to know," the dwarf drawled, and Marius turned to look at him. The elf's fingers slipped away from his wrist and he missed the pressure of them instantly. "Here I thought we'd be ass-deep in demons forever. Varric Tethras."

Varric was rugged, handsome Marius thought, with reddish-blond hair and an ostentatious coat that showed his muscular, well-furred chest.

"Pleased to meet you, Varric. Marius Trevelyan."

"I am Solas, if there are to be introductions."

Marius gazed back. Solas smiled again, his head tilting in something that almost looked like admiration. "I am pleased you yet live," he added.

"He means he kept that thing on your hand from killing you," Varric put in.

"Yes," Marius breathed, unable to look away from Solas' gaze. "Yes, I know you. You said I'd know you if- if I made it out and I do, but... But there's something-" Those gray eyes darkened and sharpened for just a moment and Marius fell silent. "How do you- I mean, you seem to know a great deal about it all."

That seemed to meet with Solas' approval.

"Unlike you," Cassandra said with a hint of distaste, "Solas is an apostate."

"Technically, all mages are now apostates, Seeker."

"Yes," she replied with even more distaste. "But Trevelyan is not a mage, Solas. He was an apprentice in only his first few years of training. He has no combat magic and no shields. He must be protected."

Everyone, even the guards, seemed shocked by this, and Marius fought the flush of embarrassment that came fresh and violent at their knowledge of his inadequacy.

Varric whistled, low. "No wonder. I never saw a mage punch a demon in the face before. You have balls, kid."

"We must still get him to the Breach," Solas said. His spine had straightened, and the wonder in his expression cooled, to a stern sort of determination.

"Agreed," said Cassandra.

Solas turned to Marius. "Stay close to Cassandra or myself at all times. Varric will need more maneuverability. If you are injured, tell me immediately."

At Varric's name, a flash of stubborn anger crossed Cassandra's gaze, as though she would protest the dwarf's involvement. But then she glanced at Marius, shook her head, and said nothing. For his part, Varric patted Marius on the lower back as he passed. "Don't worry, kid. We'll get you there."

 _And then what?_ Marius didn't ask, but he saw that everyone around him read the question in his face, and not a one of them had an answer.


End file.
